coolmite

I was talking to my brother and one of my cousins this weekend at a family party. We discussed MySpace (See my other post for that!) and getting back in touch with one’s past. My 20th year reunion is taking place this Thanksgiving weekend and I’ve had the occasion to touch base with a lot of people I went with to high school.

My brother mentioned that he hasn’t looked back since graduating high school. He said that he “tends to be a forward-thinking kind of guy.” I get that–and it’s obviously successful for him. He has the idea that he needs to have a short memory in terms of past successes and failures, because he will have new challenges and new friendships to forge as he and his family moves forward.

In other words, he plays the corner–as in cornerback position in football. As a cornerback, you’re alone on an island covering, usually, bigger, stronger, and faster receivers. You’re also responsible for run containment on your side should a running back blow past the D-line and linebackers. If you blow a tackle, or get burned by a receiver who catches a pass and takes it to the house, you will have to line up again during the next time you’re on defense and forget the mistake–or success (interception, big hit) from the previous play. You can make the analogy with several different sports–with a soccer or hockey goalie, or a closer in baseball–you get the idea.

My life has changed a lot since high school and I’ve made the most of relationships that I’ve entered. I haven’t necessarily “moved on” from thinking about other people I knew in high school or college–or post college, or pre-Chicago or post Chicago. Here’s a perfect example. I was a member of a theater company called Shadowbox in Columbus. I worked my ass off for two years, but when it came down to staying there or staying with my girl, I chose Karyn–no contest, really. Effectively, I was thinking forward. Karyn and I moved from Columbus and I had little or no ties back to this group outside of stopping by the theater whenever I was in town to say hi.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t miss or think about those people and friendships I’ve moved on from. I still drop by the theater when I get a chance and e-mail invitations to our annual summer party (they’ve never come because of constant performing). Those two years were important to me, even though I’m very far removed.

Still, I don’t want to get stuck in the past either. When life becomes static, it’s easy to think about past successes and failures in your life to motivate you or to learn from the example. In some relationships, because Karyn and I moved on, it seems like there’s always going to be unfinished business. Should I/we forget these folks beyond summer parties and Christmas Cards?

Something wonderful happened on Sunday.

My daughter, who is practicing her ballet routine for her annual recital, said the following:

I really want to practice, because I want to be the star of the show!

I found that incredible–not so much that she said or meant it. Vivian is nothing if not determined when she has her mind fixed on something, but that someone with that will to succeed came from my genes.

In other words, I’ve never been the one to say “I want to be the best” or “I want to be the star.”  I’ve reached for the brass ring if it’s there for the taking, but I’ve never really been so competitive to fight for what I want.

I can say that there have been three or four times in my life where I have really strived for excellence.

First, when I was a junior in high school, I tore my right anterior cruciate ligament to shreds during football practice. I worked very diligently to come back and play football the next year. I didn’t start or anything like that, but I proved, at least to myself, that I can come back from adversity.

Second, I had to win back my girlfriend, now my wife, with whom I’d broken up, because I was afraid of what commitment might mean. It took time to win her back, but it was worth it. She could have had any amount of suitors she wanted during the time we were apart. I was very fortunate to win her back.

Third, I wanted to be a triple-threat–singer, actor, sketch writer–at the theater company, Shadowbox Cabaret. Within a year of starting there, I had sung with the band three times, created two repeat characters, starred in a one-act play, and written four or five sketches.

Fourth, and finally, I wanted to move to Chicago to try improvisational comedy and to live in a big city. With some coaxing, I convinced Karyn to come with me on this great adventure. I tried my hand at IO and at Second City for as long as I could; then, we married in Lincoln Park and lived in Wrigleyville for two years, until we found we were expecting our first child.

These are my success stories. I guess I’m also striving to lose weight–through weight watchers–and to control my obsessive compulsive disorder–through cognitive therapy and medication. I’ve never applied this kind of focus at any other time. I think I’m going to start right now. I can be the best fundraiser at the regional hospitals of the Cleveland Clinic Health System. There’s no reason that I can’t.  I’ll just follow my daughter’s lead.

At the end of last month, I was looking at the web site for my twenty-year high school reunion. There, I saw many of my classmates’ profiles–some had MySpace links for their home pages. Two of the people I could understand–they are both in bands and looking to promote their music. There is no doubt that MySpace is great for buzz if you’re a musician, or a comedian, or a comic book scribe or artist.

I don’t necessarily think it’s the best thing for just putting yourself out there, especially if you’re married and have kids. I tried having a MySpace page for about two weeks. Many of my friends from online are people I knew when I did improv in Chicago, or they are friends of my friends from Chicago. It was fun hunting all of these people down and having them be my “friend.” It spoke to the obsessive-compulsive nature in me.

Then, I started getting invites from young girls–avatars with boobs, winks. I can only assume they were young girls, since the pictures and online language gave away some of their age. After a while, I began to realize that I didn’t have much to offer anyone in terms of information that I couldn’t post here in a blog. So, I burned down my site.

So, back to my classmates. This discovery made me think. What is the age threshhold for having a MySpace page? According to my friend, Greg Wilson, the age of creep is 35. The exceptions to the rule are younger people who are more internet savvy and immigrants who have family overseas.  One of my other cohorts from high school, Jason Bryan, said that it’s unwise to have a site if you’re in any profession outside of entertainment, particularly if you’re a teacher.

I’m a teacher–it’s not a good idea to be that accessible to my students.  Not to mention that it’s a little creepy!  I’ve never had a MySpace page and I tell anyone who wants to be a teacher to remove themselves ASAP.  I know of administrators who look at potential teaching candidates to see if they have a MySpace account and it is definitely a determining factor–never in the positive.

That’s a really good point. Most people have links in their e-mail signatures, or in other personal web sites, that lead to MySpace and Facebook style pages.

One of the band people, Asif Khan, who is a drummer for Johnny Hi-Fi, has a MySpace page for his band. He warns more against Facebook because of their ownership language in their waivers.

Facebook is a whole other beast!  Read the fine print, stated clearly is a clause indicating that whatever you put on facebook, becomes facebook property, including music, words and pictures!  Myspace does not have this clause. Post at your own risk!!!

Michelle Dobrawsky is a lawyer and improviser in New York. She says being on Facebook is something to do, and it keeps her in touch with people. Plus, she is addicted to Scrabbulous, which, I’m told is a game. My brother, Patrick, has both. He’s 28 and is part of that Millenium Generation.  A member of my improv team, Nougat, from Chicago is also on Facebook. Brian Golinvaux uses it to keep in touch with friends and to see who has kids, or lives in different places.

My friend Gwyn Ashley has another view of MySpace.

I don’t think it’s creepy.  First, you can set your settings on MySpace for only your friends to be able to contact you, see your pictures and comments…that’s what I did,” she said.  ”And anyone asking to be my friend has to know either my last name or my emailI like MySpace in that it helps me stay at least in cyberspace contact with people I USED to know very well.  

 

That’s a gtreat point, too. Now I don’t think I’ll be going down that road just to make a connection or maintain a friendship, but I have to agree that it gets results.

I remembered this sentence from a day during my junior year of college. I was a news editorial major in the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. Earlier that summer, I worked at an internship at the Youngstown Vindicator, where I was to write metro or city types of stories, since I knew the area. Unfortunately, two other OU Journalism students also got internships there. They were a year older, and, I suppose more polished, so they got the good stories and I had to create stories based on features, entertainment reviews, and local festivals. This suited me fine, actually, because I was able to write these stories pretty easily. My editor, Carl Basic (an appropos surname to be sure), usually had the red pen out when it came to my stories. This wasn’t unusual. Most interns–hell, most writers–get their first drafts hacked up by editors. Carl Basic made a meal out of my work all summer. I did put together a pretty impressive portfolio, but I’d had my fill of news writing and wanted to move in a different direction–advertising and public relations.

I told this to my advisor, Professor Donald Lambert. A tenured old salt of the newspaper world. He wrote one or two of my textbooks, I think. I told him that based on my experience last summer and my realization that newspaper reporters are not paid very well, that I’d like to switch to public relations as my sequence of my journalism degree.

He closed the book he was reading before I walked in, said,  “Well, I guess I have no use for you,” and ushered me out telling me that I’d need a new advisor.

I looked up the word superdickery in the encyclopedia later that day (this was 1990) and found a full page bleed of Donald Lambert’s face.

What. an. ass. I mean, I saw his point. He had probably seen a lot of promising writers forsake news writing for other sequences and had just given up trying to advise any of them after they moved on. That stuck with me for a while. I can’t remember who replaced him as my advisor–he was an advertising professor whom I’d had for a magazine writing/editing class, but the name escapes me. I’ll always remember Donald Lambert though.

My life has turned out ok jobwise. I’ve sold advertising, written copy, planned and ran events, presented and sold internet services, and raised money for colleges and hospitals. Still, I haven’t done as much writing in my life as I would have liked. I’ve been doing some grant writing recently, and sonuvabitch, if I’m not a really good writer.  I’m going to try to branch out into other forms of writing–for work and for fun. I don’t think I’ll send anything to Professor Lambert though.